David Coulthard said Red Bull’s rivals would want a tougher penalty for exceeding the cost cap, but would not go over the spending cap knowing they could face a “heavy” penalty.
Red Bull has been fined $7m and cut 10% of its wind tunnel and aerodynamic development time for next season after it was found to have exceeded its 2021 budget cap.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown has previously said any breach of the cost cap constituted “fraud” and called for “much tougher” penalties in future after learning of Red Bull’s punishment when the team won the McLaren Drivers’ Championship. 2021 through Max Verstappen.
As for the penalty itself, former McLaren and Red Bull driver Coulthard was pleased that the FIA released full details of the penalty, but explained why he felt it was “difficult” to go the Red Bull way. .
“Formula 1 is an aerodynamic formula, ‘Aero is King’ is kind of the belt line up here and down here,” Coulthard told Channel 4.
“So if you can spend less time in the wind tunnel developing your package, when you start with a great package and you’re already faster than everyone else, it may not affect you as much.
“But if you look at the pace of development that the teams have from the beginning of the season to the end, a car that wins the first Grand Prix without developing would have a hard time getting into the top 10 at the end of the year.
“Actually I think it’s a pretty harsh penalty, but obviously it’s one that was agreed between the FIA and Red Bull, but it’s quite good to know what the penalty is because we still don’t know what Ferrari’s penalty is when they were fined. privately behind closed doors a few years ago for something related to the engine. At least that way we have transparency.”
But while Red Bull was sanctioned, others, including Mercedes’ Toto Wolff, feel the penalty for breaking the rules was not severe enough, but Coulthard admitted no team is likely to repeat the actions and “political nature” of Formula One. 1. does not make any team immune to scandals in the future.
“Let’s say McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes break the cost cap next year because they’re willing to take a 10% cut. They won’t because 10% is 10%; nobody wants a 10% discount,” Coulthard explained.
“Of course they will say that because the shoe is not on his foot. But as safe as they are in Formula 1, there will be some controversy over the future of their team, as we saw with Ferrari.
McLaren was fined $100 million for having Ferrari designs [following the 2007 ‘Spygate’ scandal] – we forget that this happened in the past. I think it’s just the political nature of F1 that teams say “the referee will burn us all whether we like it or not”.
“The referee is the FIA, they have spoken, this is the end.”
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Source: www.planetf1.com
